To “docker-machine” or not to “docker-machine” is that even a question?!

Dec 13, 2015

Well I have to say the “native clustering” support that came out with docker machine is a ״Double-edged sword״ ;) …
On one hand it is indeed very easy to spinup a swarm cluster, but on the other if you don’t use docker-machine to do that it is just a nightmare to configure considering all the TLS / authentication configuration needed to be done in order to get this to work.

In our use case I was looking on spawning a swarm cluster running on an existing environment already utilizing consul and registrator to find that unless I use docker-machin’s “built in” swarm spawning capabilities I cannot take advantage of swarm ( or work very hard to get it to work …), don’t get me wrong this post doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use docker-machine but a caveat to be aware of when planning to.

So how did I use docker-machine?

Create a consul cluster for development & production looks something like:

Docker-machine is really a cool set of wrappers which can be very useful during deployments or even setting up clusters, unfortunately there aren’t flexible enough IMO ATM but I assume this will imrpove.

I will be publishing a series of articles + code samples which will prove why/how ansible + docker == love ;)
If you have any questions / findings you know where to find me … ;)